Grace Group undergoes first rebrand in 30 years to unify and contemporise

Grace Group has undergone its first brand overhaul in more than 30 years aimed at unifying and showcasing the breadth of records management, storage and removal services it offers.

Grace marketing manager, Racquel Collard, told CMO the 106-year old company’s services and customer base has evolved over time through organic growth and expansion as well as acquisition. Best known as a consumer removalist provider, the group in fact offers 101 services lines and generates half of total revenue through B2B and commercial sales.

As services became bolted on, new divisions were established with different mission statements, vision and go-to-market strategy. The rebrand is a reflection of group-wide efforts to unify nine overarching business divisions under one, all-encompassing identity.

“We found ourselves well-known from the old retail side of Grace Bros and for moving, but not for all the specialist services we have,” Collard said. “We created one brand with a broad range of services on offer to make it easier for people to deal with us.”

The brand refresh – Grace’s first since 1983 – was part of Collard’s remit upon joining the group two years ago. The ambition was to make the brand more relevant, contemporary and simpler to deal with.

Collard kicked off work with customer and external research to understand how Grace was received, and what strategy would be best to meet requirements. She said ongoing discussions with key executives, strategy meetings, and senior staff and team member engagement were a vital part of the process to ensure “everyone had a say”.

The new brand look, which is rolling out from June, retains Grace’s iconic red with the new catchcry, ‘always more’. Collard said the tagline reflects the group’s long-standing aspiration and ensures it’s now a core part of its personality.

Grace Group partnered with integrated agency, United Yeah, on the brand strategy and work.

Underneath the core brand, services have been grouped into three main customer areas: Home, corporate and commercial lines to make identification easier. Originally, different divisions had distinct mission and service statements, Collard continued.

“We have created one brand promise for everyone, and one firm set of values across the board,” she said. “Being customer first, passion and proactive are things that now apply to everyone. The promise is the most obvious one. It is a crystallisation of bits of service and philosophy that have always been there, but now it’s all summed up as ‘always more’. We know what that means to us and to our customers and it’s something that’s short and easy to live by.”

One of the benefits of the rebrand has been employees are better aware of what’s going on in other parts of the business, Collard said. She also claimed more proactive cross-selling as a result.

While there’s no major above-the-line launch campaign planned, the rebrand does comes with a new-look marketing strategy that sees Grace putting more emphasis on content for its B2B customers.

To assist with content requirements and activity, Collard has brought on two new headcount, increasing her team to five staff. She’s also working to upgrade tender documents and sales collateral.

Thanks to the brand research and insights, there will also be more emphasis placed on targeting key verticals and campaigns that are more moulded by insights gathered. Overall, however, Collard said the focus is just on doing everything “better”.

“Because of the limited resources available, we had to let some things be,” she said. “We’re now lifting our online activity, pushing into stronger campaigns via LinkedIn, establishing an Instagram channel, and refreshing our other social media channels.

“We’ll work to build the content to make it worthwhile and go to market with it. We’re also doing more video than in the past.”

In 1976 Apple launched. The business would go on to change the game, setting the bar for customer experience (CX). Seamless customer experience and intuitive designs gave customers exactly what they wanted, making other service experiences pale in comparison.

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